Historical analogies often serve as tools to explain the world we confront today or expect for tomorrow. In foreign affairs, the pre-World War II "appeasement of Munich" provides one of the most powerful images. For the U.S. military, influential analogies are drawn from Pearl Harbor, Vietnam, the Gulf War, and Mogadishu. Ernest May insightfully examined the use—and misuse—of such historical analogies for policymaking in his seminal book Thinking in Time (New York: Free Press, 1986). The Department of Defense would be well advised to consult this work in its preparations for the many difficult problems ahead.
More than a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall and still reeling from the 11 September terrorist attacks, the United States remains mired in uncertainty as to the future security environment and its implications for U.S. military strategy. Asymmetric challenges seem central to the concepts and thinking of key DoD officials, such as the Director of the Office of Net Assessment, Andrew Marshall, From what can be gathered from the media, his strategy points toward Asia as the critical area for the nation's future security. Marshall raises serious concerns over the ability of adversaries to pursue antiaccess strategies, keeping U.S. forces from deploying to conduct operations at acceptable costs and in timely fashion.
Focus on the Pacific area—especially a potential Chinese antiaccess threat—is engendering resistance within the services. They seem intent on showing how they can solve the challenge or, often at the same time, are not really hindered in deploying forces forward. On 17 May, The New York Times quoted Admiral Dennis Blair, Commander-in-Chief, Pacific:
The Chinese do not have an over-the-horizon target system that is capable of hitting U.S. forces .... If you want to look at serious forces designed to keep the U.S. out of part of the world, look at what the Russians did in the 70s—dozens of submarines, hundreds of long-range bombers, dozens of satellites, lots of practice. That was a serious system which we were going to have a hard time fighting our way through. Nobody in Asia is even close to that.
Comparison of Soviet-U.S. and Chinese-U.S. strategic postures—as with most international security analogies between the Cold War and the 21st century—does not survive scrutiny:
Level of U.S. commitment is different: Vital versus important interests. The potential Cold War battle would have been a fight for national survival, with the sure premise that the survival of every citizen was at risk because of nuclear weapons. The United States was risking Boston for Bonn. During the 1996 Formosa Straits crisis, a Chinese official asked if the United States was willing to risk San Francisco for Taipei. The jury has not returned on this key question.
Structure of military confrontation is different: Defense to offense. The U.S. strategy in confronting the Soviet Union is different from strategic competition with the Chinese. NATO would have waited for the Warsaw Pact to attack rather than projecting power to intercept an attack on another party. For the most part, the war presumably would have been fought with Soviet forces moving farther from their bases and closer to NATO's. In a U.S.-Chinese military confrontation, the situation will be reversed.
Availability of allies and access has changed greatly. The Soviets complained regularly that U.S. bases encircled them. They were not wrong—there was a network of U.S. bases and access encircling the Soviet Union. In a NATO-Warsaw Pact conflict, U.S. forces would have been fighting with allies from bases used regularly in peacetime. Few Pacific nations are U.S. allies bound by defense treaty arrangements. In postulated U.S-China conflicts, it is estimated that most of them would want to sit out the war rather than get engaged or allow U.S. forces to operate from their soil.
The United States is in a period of serious reflection over how best to structure its military for the challenges of the 21st century. Past experiences will play a role in shaping U.S. thinking and approaches, but as Ernest May cautioned, we must carefully test history for relevancy and "think in time" rather than substitute inappropriate analogies for thought. Relying on incorrect analogies can promote a false sense of confidence and send the nation down wrong-and highly dangerous—paths.
Adam Siegel has worked as a civilian with the U.S. armed forces for 20 years, including during Operations Desert Storm and Allied Force. He is a senior analyst at the Northrop Grumman Analysis Center in Rosslyn, Virginia.